Bennett stepped past him and walked to the gate that led to the apartment complex. She noticed there were no lights in any of the windows. No one was watching. There wasn’t even anyone in the small guardhouse that stood next to the gate. There was just her, and the man, who had followed her over the road without making a sound and was now grabbing her shoulders and spinning her back round to face him.

‘You are Abey Bennett,’ he said again. His voice was stronger, the British accent more pronounced, and his eyes were suddenly urgent with focus. ‘You are from Lakin, Kansas. Your mother died three years ago. You miss her. You feel guilty for not being there when it happened, and for how much you hate that she didn’t see you become a CIA agent. Your brothers still live in Lakin. You don’t miss them. And you’re the only person who can help me.’

Bennett was stunned. There was no way some crazy vagrant could know all that about her—or anyone in Haina. She’d never talked to her colleagues about her family or where she was from.

She pulled his hands off her. They came away easily, as if his outburst had drained all the energy from him.

‘Help you with what?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, his voice feeble again, and his eyes now begging.

‘Okay,’ she replied slowly, glancing again at the dark, silent apartment block and making a quick calculation. ‘Tell you what, let’s start with getting you some rest. Just don’t try and pull anything funny.’

This man might not be the Wolf, but he knew more than he should about Bennett, and she was curious about how he’d come by so much personal information. She wanted to get him somewhere she could contain him, and question him. But that wasn’t going to happen for at least a few hours, because as soon as she opened the door to her studio, the man collapsed on her bed and fell into a deep, unwakeable sleep.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Knox had all of five minutes to consider the stack of papers that had been left for him to review in his office on the fifth floor of Leconfield House before he was summoned next door to see Holland.

Holland kept his own desk fastidiously neat, clear of everything except what he was dealing with at that precise moment, and, sitting in the single chair across from the director general of MI5, Knox noticed two manila folders on the vast slab of mahogany between them.

‘Rested from your break?’ Holland asked, as he pulled a chamois from a drawer and polished the lenses of his metal-rimmed glasses.

It was a rhetorical question, and a rebuke for Knox not coming straight back to headquarters after his long journey from Vancouver Island.

‘So, what was Northcott up to?’